Scott's Personal Blog

NYC Transit Strike: Fun & Games in NYC

Maybe it's just physics. Perhaps all things, even bad ideas, have their own sort of momentum. The December, 2005 NYC Transit Strike may be one such idea. I part think a lot of people wanted it to happen just to see what would happen. Is it pessimistic to believe that we're collectively even more twisted in terms of desire for spectacle than some of us are individually? Of course, it could just be me who thinks that a lot of people actually wanted to see what would happen. No doubt there's been loss and inconvenience. Economic and perhaps otherwise. Still, I think watching this unfold involved the same kind of proverbial morbid object fixation that slows down traffic to see a car accident.

So what did happen? I don't think we all really know yet. Now that it's over, in spite of the fallout it seems like almost a non-event. A brief adventure in collective struggle. Even as a bargain is reached on Wednesday, 12/28, there's only the briefest of news coverage. And hardly any recap of what went on. Where are the lessons learned? What kind of things happened during this event? Really now. How did government handle it? (Personally I give Mayor Mike a thumbs up on this one.) By the way, how is the fireman who was hit by a car while riding his bike to work? How many other people, if any, were hurt or suffered loss due to slowed EMS response, inability to get medications or who shouldn't have been exerting themselves to the degree they did?

There's probably some good, bad and ugly that went on during the whole thing. And some things I just don't really understand. I'm going to list just a few and maybe others can comment as well.

Stuff I Don't Understand

• Where were the T-shirt guys? It wasn't even that cold. This is NYC. Why weren't the "I Survived Strike '05" T-shirts  on sale by mid-AM on day one??? Is the simple answer that those guys would have all needed to use transit to get to their street corners???
• How/why did some people manage to drive into town with under 4 people in the car? I'm not a big fan of mass media myself, but you had to have your head really firmly all the way up your a#$ to miss the word on that requirement.

The Good

• NYCers did show the world, yet again, that the people that live and work here just aren't all that evil. In fact, people's patience in this case is even more impressive considering just what happened. That is, I think NYers are generally fairly tolerant in lot of ways, but for the one real sin you can commit in NY. And that's "Don't Get In The Way." Don't get in the way of business. Don't hesitate at the green light. Don't get between me and... whatever. DON'T SLOW ME DOWN. Maybe everyone was happy for the excuse to kick it down a notch.
• Bicycle shops apparently stepped up their business. Though I'm not quite sure this is all good. I saw one newscast with a woman who hadn't been on a bike in years weaving her way out of the bike shop. She ended up taking a cab home, but I wonder... is she now a) thinking she wasted some money, b) going to go get herself killed trying to actually use the thing in traffic. (Maybe this should have been in the bad category.)
• Will there be a Transit Strike Marriage/Baby Effect? Like blackout babies and other storm events, this one put people together in new and interesting ways. Cab sharing that otherwise wouldn't have occurred, drivers picking up people they didn't know who got into cars with drivers they didn't know. Had to have been some relationships formed out of all this. (The cynical might also think a carjacking or two, but I guess we can add to the good section that this didn't seem to happen.)

The Bad

• A not fully earned sense of self-satisfaction on the part of all those who think they handled themselves so well. This may just be pessimism on my part, but I really wonder how good a job we all would have been doing with it had things gone on another week or so.
• In a lot of ways, for a lot of people, it was almost like losing a whole bunch of quality out of their lives. Maybe just a few days, but still... hours more spent in traffic or on foot meant that much more time away from home or family or friends or personal time. There was no way to plan doing much of anything in the evening, etc. This happens occasionally as a matter of course due to occasional extreme weather events and such, but this thing was clearly of people's own doing. An inability to reach an agreement, (which was subsequently reached just fine while people were working), resulted in a very small group disproportionately affecting MILLIONS of people's lives.

The Ugly

• People were injured as a direct result of this situation.
• People were economically hit, some very hard. Those at the lower end of the economic spectrum can ill afford several days - or in the case of the MTA workers themselves - a week or more worth of missing paycheck.

The Amusing

• While commuting with some co-workers, we came across a hithhiker. He had a sign. But this wasn't some vagabond hippie with a knapsack and the sign didn't say "Anywhere West" or anything like that. The guy had what appeared to be a decent overcoat and I think a suit underneath. And the cardboard sign said, "Wall Street." You kind of had to be there, but it was pretty funny. Sadly, we didn't have room to help him out and we weren't going all the way downtown anyway. If I'd thought of it sooner, I'd have tossed him a quarter though.

The End

Like the stories from the nyc blackout of 2003 and the occasional massive snowstorm, the Transit Strike of 2005 adds itself to those special slices of life that only a city like New York can really provide. I wonder what's going to happen next?

I Am Frogger

It's true that I'm an adult and a businessperson. Yet, at the same time, it seems I have a fair amount in common with a frog.  Unfortunately, it's not the one that gets kissed by a hot princess and turns into a prince. (At least, not yet anyway.) No, I'm talking about the frog of videogame fame. Frogger. Someone's actually put up an online version of Frogger if you don't remember the game well or do and really want to play. As you may recall, Frogger spends his time trying to cross a busy set of streets and rivers. Why we're not quite sure. I suppose the game inventor was fond of that age old Chicken crossing the road question and just wanted to be different in terms of animal selection. Sadly, we may never know, though a Frogger Wikipedia entry is quite fortunately available for those who just need to know more. In spite of the unknowns, what is certain is that Frogger has a high likelihood of dying or at least getting fairly well mangled during every attempt to get home. And I'd assume by corollary in each attempt to get to the side of the road he's on in the first place. Since he's headed to Froggie Home, I'm going to assume he's at work. And commuting. Hence, my empathy towards him.

How did this come to be? For whatever reasons, it's come to pass that I work in an NYC neighborhood that's exceptionally difficult for me to commute to via public transportation. So I'm currently driving into a spot a bit below east side mid-town Manhattan. This is time consuming, expensive and probably foolish. In the not too distant future I'm going to have to change my living situation, my work situation or my attitude. 'Cause this just will not do. Based on my experiences I've developed some tips for those that commute into Manhattan via automobile.

Best Suggestions

1. Don't.
2. Move into the city or change jobs.
3. Move closer to public transportation.
4. Just put a target on yourself and run around downrange at a terrorist training camp. It'll be faster and less painful.
5. Get a bunch of CD's with educational stuff on them. It's amazing what you can learn in hours of traffic! Try The Teaching Company. They've got some good stuff.

A Bit More Real

1. Know how to drive. Really. If you don't belong behind the wheel of 2,500 pounds of steel, aluminum and plastic hurtling itself through throngs of humanity, bike messengers who know longer care about lights, etc. you really don't belong here. C'mon. You just have to know who you are, don't you?
2. Seriously, if you don't know about NYC, you should understand that for some reason over the past few years humans and especially a lot of folks on bikes just couldn't care less about signage or lights or where they cross or looking for you. Thing is, you're still not supposed to run them over.
3. Make sure you have plenty of gas. There's a bunch of stations, (expensive), scattered throughout NYC. But the thing is, if you don't know just where they are and you're running low, you've got a real problem. Worse, you could - just by being a moron - singlehandedly hold up traffic for tens of thousands and cost hundreds of thousands in lost productivity. Traffic, sometimes BAD traffic, happens. Be ready. While you're at it, maintain your vehicle. Yeah, crap breaks down. But if you end up breaking down and holding up a million people because you just never check your tire pressure, well you probably deserve it if some guy behinds you sends your trunk into your back seat.
4. Before you honk your horn, take a peek ahead. Think to yourself, "If that guy's own life depended on it, could he even move if he wanted to?" If the answer is "no," chances are honking won't help. And it could get you an expensive ticket in some places.
5. Have a clue where you're going. With online maps, etc. there's just no excuse for not having a clue anymore.

I have zero expectation that anyone who desperately needs to read this will do so. But maybe, just maybe if even a couple of new drivers or new to the area folks manage to take any of this to heart, that'll be one less person in MY way everyday.

Oh No. Here Comes Another One

Yes, that's right kids. Yet another monkey that somehow got access to a keyboard that happens to be attached to the Internet has found a place to post a blog.

But... why?

That's a fine question. My goal is to use this space to capture some experiences that are otherwise the stuff of word of mouth. The little helpful snippets usually shared by friends that help with success or help stop loss. Thing is, I've personally got a ton of interests and hobbies. And I've had the benefit of a lot of great teachers. (Quite a few of whom didn't know they were teaching at the time; often serving as really, really bad examples.) So as a result, I've got some strage and possibly wholly unwarranted belief that I may have some things of value to say here.

In fairness, to myself that is, I've done a bit of web creation in the past that seems to have been of some value. Besides having designed or project managed some of the first commercial online products in the world, my little personal web site garners a fair amount of hits in some of its topic categories. And I even get the occasional feedback note. Mostly postive even. So we'll see what develops here. This post here... well it's just a big "Howdy, I'm here" and a require first bunch of words so I can see a good design preview.

I'll have to check back myself in a year and see if I actually got motivated in this space to create anything of value here.